


Cupcakes

by teenymeanie



Category: Homestuck
Genre: AU, F/F, Guilt, Humanstuck, Scourge Sisters, Scourgecest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-30
Updated: 2015-05-30
Packaged: 2018-04-02 01:53:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,602
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4041175
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/teenymeanie/pseuds/teenymeanie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"This cannot be happening."<br/>Terezi forgets an ingredient for cupcakes and has to ask an old friend for help.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Cupcakes

This cannot be happening. 

You had everything planned out perfectly. You made a carefully notated shopping list after checking and re-checking the contents of your cupboards and apartment mini-fridge, you brought a pen to the supermarket and checked off items as you found them, and you were sure then--as you are sure now--that you bought a small bag of all-purpose flour. You are sure. You just don't know where it is. Surrounded by thrift store cookbooks and printed off recipes from some haughty baking website, you push aside the sugar, the milk, eggs, look under scraps of paper and up and around and in the silverware drawer and you even march back out to the stairwell and recheck it in case you dropped the pathetic escapee, but the flour is nowhere to be found. 

You don't have many options. You promised Kanaya you would have these cupcakes done for Rose's birthday party, which, you realize with dismay when you glance at the clock, is in forty minutes. You could run back to the store and buy more, but you have exactly fifty seven cents in your wallet and the excursion is bound to take nearly half an hour to drive there and back, find the flour, wait in line, and repurchase it. You don't have that kind of time. Your other option is to call Kanaya and tell her you can't do it, but changing details on such short notice is bound to make poor Maryam short circuit, and you just can't be that person today. Your final option... Your final option you don't even want to think about. 

You're a strong girl. Once you accidentally power-washed your own leg and blew off a hunk of skin the size of a penny and didn't even cry. You love roller coasters. You show off your bruises. You passed AP Calculus with minimal emotional scars. You are strong. But now, as you lean over your kitchen counter to check the recipe for the third time, thinking maybe, just maybe, you didn't need flour anyway, you know you've already lost your fight. 

You have to ask Vriska for help.

God, you don't like admitting that. You just threw up in your mouth a little.

You remove your apron and set aside your culinary weapons of choice. You slip on shoes and leave your apartment with all the enthusiasm of stepping up a rickety step stool to be hanged. As you jog up the steps to Vriska's unit and are immediately assaulted with some sort of torture soundtrack of animals screaming to a bassline, you have to remind yourself several times that Kanaya is counting on you, you are strong, think of how disappointed Rose would be, you can do this, you can do this, you can do this. You pound your fists on the door with all your might, though you doubt even that will be heard over whatever the fuck she's playing from what must be very powerful speakers. 

When no answer comes, you twist the knob and find that it is unlocked. You let yourself in. 

The room is disgusting, as usual. Every inch of ratty blue upholster is covered in mysterious stains, empty soda cans, half-eaten boxes of pizza, neon underwear, scraps of paper, dog-eared books, and... is that a giant rat or a matted pillow? You nudge it with your foot and it unrolls to reveal that it is, in fact, neither, but is, instead, a bathrobe. The air reeks of men's cologne and booze and cigarettes, though you can't find evidence of any of these things. It's plausible that they are buried under some ungodly filth. 

You spot a large, vibrating speaker beside a pile of old blankets--the source of the demonic din--and you unplug it. Your ears thank you. 

"Don't touch my stuff," a voice moans weakly from the blankets. You look, and you think you can see two bloodshot eyes peering up at you through the layers of cotton. You sit on the pile. She screams.

"Oh, sorry Vriska," you say as she (unsuccessfully) attempts to buck you off with a flurry of waving feet and scratching arms. "I didn't see you there." She replies with a garbled string of slurs and something about how you can't see anyway. You click your tongue at her. "Tsk, tsk. So testy." You stand up and Vriska heaves the blankets off of her slight frame, panting. 

"What's wrong with you?" she demands, rubbing her eyes. "I was listening to that." You notice her dirty tanktop and plain black underwear and your heart breaks, just like that. 

"Were you sleeping on the floor all day?"

"Bitch, maybe." She holds up her arms pathetically and you help her to her feet, where she wobbles unsteadily. Her hair is unwashed, her wide eyes smudged with makeup. She offers a lazy smile and you can tell she is absolutely overjoyed to see you. You should have just gone to the store. You should have told Kanaya you can't do it. You shouldn't have come. Vriska reaches for your hands and holds them in hers, bouncing with excitement. "So why'd you come over? Did you want to go do something? See a movie?"

"I just need flour," you say gently, slipping your hands away. She blinks, reaching for your hands again for a split second before she catches herself and grabs the hem of her shirt instead. She wilts right there in front of you and you hate yourself and her and what you were. 

"Oh. Okay. I think I have some." She hobbles on pale, bare feet to another room and fumbles around, drops something. Curses. 

"If you don't have any, I can run to the store quick." You want to save her. 

"No, no, it's no problem!" She won't let you. 

"Any kind is fine," you call. 

"I think there's some in the back..." Her voice trails off and in the stale silence of the apartment you hear her sniff, sigh, muffle a sound with her hand. 

You peek into the kitchen. "Vriska...?"

The cabinets are all wide open, completely empty. No food, no dishes, nothing. Just dust. The space where a fridge might go is a clean rectangle on the dingy wall, open wires at the center. Plastic utensils litter the counter-top alongside bags of chips and smashed bottles of beer. Vriska rearranges the shattered glass and garbage as if to make them more presentable. Pity shoots through you like a bullet. Your heart drops to your stomach. You shouldn't have come. 

"No flour," she says cheerily, not turning around. "Haven't been shopping in a while. I can't always give handouts, you know!"

"Vriska..." You pick your way through the paper plates and snack wrappers on the floor to her side, where you stand awkwardly. You shouldn't have come. 

"Sorry," she says, dropping the bravado. "Just haven't been shopping." She glances at you with a quick grin and you have to physically brace yourself for the guilt that washes over you. Yes, you broke up with her after that night. Yes, you want to stay apart. Yes, she's awful for you. She's an asshole. She's mean. 

And you love her still. 

You pull her to you, gently, with two fingers under her sharp chin. When you kiss her, it is nothing like it used to be. There's no fire, or fierceness. She doesn't nip at you and no one growls or hisses or pushes. You just... kiss. 

Her hands sneak up your hips under your shirt, and you trace her lips with your tongue. She presses against you completely, thighs on thighs, stomach to stomach, and whispers something that sounds like a thank you. Gone is the bite and sting of her nails against you, gone is her insistence that, no, she didn't like you like that. No, she didn't really have feelings for you, no, it was nothing personal. Just fooling around. Gone. Now, she says your name like a prayer, like a mantra, and she's pliant in your hands, trying to get as close to you as she possibly can. 

You fumble to get each others shirts off and click right back together like magnets, her spidery legs around your round ones, and you clear a space off the cluttered counter with a wild arm, and lift her onto it. You're on your tiptoes and she's leaning down to kiss you, and, wow, it was kind of a bad idea since you're so much shorter than her already, but you kiss down her neck, down her chest, and you're at the point of no return and her fingers are in your hair and she's making that sound you remember from nights on the balcony and mornings in your bed and afternoons in your beat-up car and this is a bad idea, you shouldn't have come, you're a strong girl, bad idea, bad idea. When she sighs, she sighs your name and pulls you up to kiss you all over, loving, sensitive kisses you never knew she could give. 

"I'm sorry, Terezi," she says, after the two of you calm down, pushing your hair away from your face. Her thumbs trace under your eyes. "For everything."

"I know."

You find the flour under the passenger seat of your car. Kanaya and Rose come over right on time to pick up the cupcakes and don't ask when Vriska answers your door. You both politely decline their invitations to the party. When you ask Vriska if she would like to spend the night, she doesn't answer, and kisses you instead.


End file.
